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I understand that with the Facebook API release 2.0 you now have to get permission to access a Facebook users' user_groups. I thought it was a review to keep out spammers and we developed an App that requires user_group access but actually sends users back to his or her Facebook page so we thought our app would be approved. However, the reply was pretty clear:

General The user_groups permission is only approved for apps that let people use Facebook on platforms where Facebook is not already available. If you're building an app on Android and iOS, for example, you won't be approved for this permission. Web, Desktop and TV apps will also not be granted this permission.

So our approval was denied. I have two questions:

1) Does Facebook have an appeal process or a way to reach someone to see if they do grant permission to apps that are complimentary to the platform?

2) If not, and nobody can get access to user_groups, is this a viable workaround that will not violate Facebook policies.

I need to search my registered users Facebook Groups. Can I have the user invite me to the user_group and then become a member and once a member search the group and share the information back to my users? I know some groups are secret or closed and I would need admin approval and that will slow the process but what other workaround is there for apps that need user_group info?

Thanks.

Texas_Developer
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  • The response you got is listed under https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/permissions/v2.2#reference-user_groups . There is no reason to appeal because it is clear that you are not going to be approved – WizKid Dec 01 '14 at 17:54
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about Facebook policy. – phwd Dec 01 '14 at 17:55

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right now there is NO solution yet, facebook does not allow you to obtain the list of groups of users by graph-api. The only way that I had was that your users create an application and developers could obtain permits user_groups, but after release of php- sdk-v5 on July 8, you get an error that says:

Invalid Scopes: user_groups. This message is only shown to developers. Users of your app will ignore These permissions if present. Please read the documentation for valid permissions at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/permissions

My advice is to look for a way to get the list of user groups without relying on the API, that facebook will increasingly be putting a halt until it impossible to get.

I'll try to get the HTML and extract the ids of the user groups from https://www.facebook.com/bookmarks/groups

Community
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user3116428
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